What to get the woman who has everything
A honkin’ big boat.
I think the Telegraph is conflating two issues here. The government is proposing buying Her Maj a nice new £60M yacht for her Diamond Jubilee, but the picture shows the Royal Barge, which I’m pretty sure either exists already or will definitely exist. They’re pulling together a seven mile flotilla of a thousand boats to float down the Thames as part of the celebrations in June.
Only Victoria managed 60 years on the sparkly chair (that’s British monarchs; I don’t how many swarthy potentates from far-flung principalities might have made the grade). She reigned a further four years after that, so Liz only has to go another five years to be THRONE WINNAH!
We’re getting a four-day weekend (as if my whole life isn’t a weekend) and I’ve learned today we’ll have a party in our parish. There are little grants being handed out to individual parishes for the celebrations. So for the first time in my life, I shall feast and make merry on the coin of some uppity rich bastard in London. Just like a fairy tale.
If I get a move on, I can have my citizenship by then and be a proper English peasant.
January 18, 2012 — 10:53 pm
Comments: 33
Nope. No idea.
Google Translate wasn’t much help, either. I think the caption was something like, “Girls, what are you doing?”
Got jammed up tonight, but I know my audience. I figured this picture would earn me a stunned silence, followed by a thoughtful pause, followed by a prolonged period of wistful introspection.
During which I could slip out the back door unnoticed.
January 10, 2012 — 11:25 pm
Comments: 45
Yep, that’s a banjo
So, this is an indie band from Beijing called Shan Ren. It means “Mountain Men” but they have a lot of different, mostly modern Western, influences. This playlist will give you a taste (huh. Amazing how much an electric guitar through a wah-wah pedal sounds Chinese).
Last year, they traveled across Yunnan province filming the locals and recording music. Turns out, most folk music is about drinking moonshine. How strangely familiar.
In honor of that, they recorded this Drinking Song, which I thought was lots of fun. Based on a local folk song, the main chorus means, “you have to drink, whether you want to or not.”
What? Oh, no. If politics wants me to pay attention to it again, it’s going to have to stop sucking so hard.
January 4, 2012 — 11:24 pm
Comments: 21
Doom. DOOOOOOOMMMMM…!
Holy shit, have you dipped a toe in the papers since Christmas? I haven’t seen such a doomfest since my Great Aunt Ruth was alive (to the extent she was ever alive).
You know, Uncle B has this theory that everyone is holding it together by brute force until Christmas is over, at which point the whole global financial doo-dah will shriek, burst its corset and spontaneously combust. I’m putting that out there in case he’s right, so he gets the bragging rights (and if he’s wrong, we can all rag on him together).
We’ve got cash, canned goods and armed farmers for neighbors. We’re positioned about as well as anyone can be, comes the shitstorm.
Graphic nicked from The Telegraph, on account of I am doing my best to squeeze a whole week out of the Christmas spirit — which, to me, involves equal parts gluttony and sloth (with a soupçon of dipsomania).
December 27, 2011 — 11:07 pm
Comments: 40
Merry Ho Ho, y’all!
Midnight in Old Blighty. Uncle B wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas, but he felt funny doing it in the Dead Pool thread.
So I made him this here post.
December 25, 2011 — 12:22 am
Comments: 60
This isn’t a Photoshop, either
This old snapshot is Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, having what probably passes for fun in a psycho dictator family. Geez, talk about your awkward family photos.
Right. I’m going to queue up the Dead Pool to autopost for tomorrow. Which means — I’ll see you on Boxing Day! Have a fan-fucking-tabulous Christmas, everyone!
Except that Tiny Tim guy. He really pisses me off.
December 22, 2011 — 10:33 pm
Comments: 33
Snf, snf…you smell something?
Aw, did you see this? Dear Leader may not get the waxwork embalming treatment. Apparently, it costs about $300,000 to fly in the Soviets for the full plastination dealio, so they might bury him like a common mortal. The Norks are a bit skint at the moment.
Oh, but hey — good news! I got to use the Photoshop “plastic wrap” filter for the first (and undoubtedly last) time.
Speaking of Photoshop, Adobe is turning the crank something fierce. For several years now, they’ve been overpricing individual software products (~$600 each), hoping to force users into “suites” of programs (to the tune of about $1,500 a suite).
Now, they’ve changed their upgrade policy, just in time for Christmas. Used to be, you were allowed to upgrade at a discount for three releases. Now, they’ve announced you have to buy every release or fall off the upgrade ladder. Because what they’re really trying to do is get everyone on a subscription, so we pay every month for the privilege of using their software.
However you slice it, it’ll be a steady $600 a year or so to have the latest and greatest Photoshop. Weasel, out 🙁
December 20, 2011 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 32
Kim Jong-dead
I did not do this. This is not my work. God help me, it might even be real. Tineye found 129 copies of this, and not one (that I could find) with an explanation.
No Photoshop of mine could top this, so I didn’t try.
The two official DPRK sites I know of (here and here) haven’t caught up with the news yet. That probably means screaming chaos behind the scenes for the foreseeable. They’re worth a look anyway — always a zany, madcap romp through the Wonderland of the East.
I’m pretty sure this chubby young man isn’t sleeping too soundly tonight. Kim Jong-un was never officially named heir, he’s the youngest of the three sons, and Kim’s brother-in-law is apparently a contender, too.
If you’ll recall, it took three years for Kim Jong-il to consolidate his power, and even then, his dead father Kim Il-sung remained president. And still is.
My, my…what an interesting year.
December 19, 2011 — 8:27 pm
Comments: 32
We are building something ever so strange…
Look, it’s me! I’m a naked acid-puking necromorph!
This is the multiplayer Dead Space 2, which is played on servers belonging to Electronic Arts. It’s a fairly long wait before enough people jump in to make up a game (it’s played in two teams, humans versus aliens; you need a good 6-8 people to start) so I listen in on the the chatter of players who’ve left their microphones open.
Now, I realize I’m in Britain, so the closest servers are probably in Europe somewhere, but I’m gob-smacked at the range of voices I hear. Not just European languages…there are quite a few from further afield. Russians and Chinese. Indians, I think. I’m not the best at identifying languages. The voices belong to older people than I would have guessed (or maybe it’s just older people who are dumb enough to leave their mics on). I often hear children and TV in the background.
Thing is, this mirrors my observations in art and music forums: thanks to the internet, we’re cobbling together a weird international monoculture. It’s heavily but not exclusively American. Anime and Manga are powerful influences in the visual arts, for example. Chinese martial arts in gaming.
In many countries, it can only be a tiny minority who have access to broadband and gaming-spec computers. But among those people, we are all sharing a single culture: music, movies, comics, animation…and especially video games. I have no idea what this means, but I’m sure it’s important. And weird. And completely unprecedented.
There are kids in Beijing and Bangalore playing rock and roll, and you would recognize the song.
November 18, 2011 — 12:06 am
Comments: 20
When smart people go stupid
Okay, so why are the individual nations of Europe hanging onto the EU with white knuckles, throwing the last of their money down this dry hole? Two things underpin it, one sensible and one not.
They are absolutely terrified of another war. The last war still looms over everything here, fresh and vivid and awful in the minds of pretty much anyone old enough to be in government (all of them, when the EU was being cobbled together).
The not-so-sensible thing? A huge number of those people are convinced that what caused both World Wars was nationalism, by which they mean what an American would call patriotism. They are so sure of this, it’s not even an argument; it’s simply obvious to everyone.
They are horrified when Americans chant “USA! USA!” at sporting events. At best, it’s an appalling Neanderthal faux pas (much as if we were screaming racial slurs). At worst, ZOMG! ZOMG! Shut up with the nationalism, you’re going to get us all killed already!
Seriously. They think they can (and must) break people of being tribal. They think they can unite them all behind the United States of Vague Geographic Proximity. The pictures on Euro banknotes are of generic landmarks that don’t actually exist.
This is why Angela Merkel can survey the break up of European project and casually observe that peace cannot be taken for granted. It’s a perfectly sensible remark to her and her kind. This isn’t an economic union to them, it’s survival.
In reality, the technocrats of the EU have not banished human nature. You won’t stop a Brit poking fun at a Frenchman, or a German looking down his nose at a Greek. People who speak different languages, worship in different churches and have been raiding each other’s stuff since the Ice Age will not willingly pull together in harness for long.
Unless maybe aliens land and start shooting up the place.
November 15, 2011 — 10:55 pm
Comments: 50